Lawmakers focus on retail theft reduction at City Leaders Summit

By Brian Hendershot, Cal Cities Advocate managing editor

Sen. Aisha Wahab, Asm. Wendy Carrillo, and Asm. Juan Alanis outlined their plans to reduce retail theft at a Cal Cities panel on Wednesday.

The bipartisan trio stressed that retail theft is not a partisan issue. And although Proposition 47 created some unintended consequences, no one wants to return to the days of mass incarceration.

Sen. Wahab, chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee, focused on how legal loopholes and police vacancies, combined with organized retail theft, are hitting small businesses particularly hard. Staffing levels are at their lowest level since 1991 and the state has fewer officers per resident than the national average.

Small businesses, she noted, cannot sustain those losses. And many police departments don't have the resources to respond to every robbery.

"Organized retail theft is even more organized than you can think," Sen. Wahab said. "We have seen where people are literally burning down a part of a department store to create a distraction to then steal from another part of the department store."

The senator introduced SB 982 to help close one of those loopholes. The bill would ensure that organized retail theft remains a crime in the state penal code.

Asm. Carrillo also spoke about the impact of retail theft on small businesses. She noted that in the Los Angeles community of Eagle Rock, retail theft is a weekly occurrence. Yet well-intended laws make it difficult for law enforcement to arrest perpetrators - especially businesses that don't have the resources for a loss prevention team or a camera system.

Her bill, AB 1990, would allow police officers to arrest shoplifters even if they did not witness the crime if they have reasonable cause.

"Why have we gotten to a point where you need to ask for a key to open up a case to buy deodorant," Asm. Carrillo asked. "As someone who has been on the reform side of many policies, criminal justice reform and restorative justice policies does not mean that we create policies where we allow crime."

Asm. Alanis, vice chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, talked about how Prop 47 affected his three-decade stint in law enforcement. The 2014 initiative raised the felony threshold for theft to $950. According to Alanis, Prop. 47 makes it harder for police officers to get people into recidivism reduction programs and behavioral health care.

One of his bills, AB 1972, would help reduce cargo theft. Industry analysts say that cargo theft is likely at an all-time high because it is low-risk and high reward. California is reportedly one of the nation's top three hotspots for cargo theft.

"I'm about giving people second, third chances - whatever we can to help them," he said. We don't need to lock them up for life, but people do need to have consequences. And Prop. 47 basically wiped out the consequences."

The bills in this story are all supported by Cal Cities and are part of a broader, legislative effort to reduce retail theft.

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